Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

In a recent interview Bwin’s CEO, Norbert Teufelberger expressed his personal opinions and stated that both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were “operating illegally” in the US. He also said that Bwin’s pulling out of the US in the year 2006 could turn out to be the “biggest mistake” both he and his co-CEO Manfred Bodner have made, if the US permitted PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to continue business in the country.

“We pulled out, they didn’t. But we’ll see who was right in the end. We still believe we were correct and it’s pretty clear cut,” Teufelberger stated.

After the US e-gaming laws changed in 2006, companies like Bwin pulled out of the US market in order to avoid lawsuits, while PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker held on to their positions and continued operations. Today, both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have become the top two gaming companies in the world, which according to Bwin CEO, Norbert Teufelberger, is in no way a coincidence.

“There are only two companies in the world who are stronger in poker than us, and they are only stronger because they still operate in the US. It’s not because they have premier marketing skills or premier technology, what they have is hundreds of millions of dollars from what we see as an illegal market,” Norbert Teufelberger commented.

Indeed, while many speculate on the legal standing of these two poker companies PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, it must be said that any decision to provide them with US gaming licenses will have to be a carefully considered decision. Should the companies be found to have been operating illegally, it would not do to reward them with US permits to provide gaming services to American players.

Teufelberger believes that the US government will freeze out the two sites, which continued operations in the US despite gaming regulations and the UIGEA. “We would expect that once the US regulates these two companies will not have access to the market, and once that happens we’ll then see who the leader will be. They say they’re not operating illegally but I think they are. Let’s see who is right,” he added.

Although Macau is considered to be the poker capital of Asia, its neighbor Hong Kong does not permit it. It is illegal for gamers to play poker games like Texas hold ‘Em and Omaha anywhere in Hong Kong, and anyone caught gambling will have to face serious fines, as was the case with a group of poker players who were caught playing an underground game of poker. The only forms of gambling allowed in Honk Kong are horse race betting, the lottery and football betting. The Hong Kong Jockey Club operates all three betting establishments.

Seven poker players including a banker from Merrill Lynch, were arrested by the Chinese police for playing Texas hold ‘Em poker in Hong Kong and over HKD $153,000 in cash and HKD $3.7 million in chips were also seized. All seven poker players were high profile businessmen and numbered two bankers in their group, along with two investment consultants, a businessman, a bank teller and two company directors. The whole group was arrested and required to pay a lofty fine; also taken into custody were four young women who ran the underground poker parlor, two of whom were locals and two other who were Nepalese.

Michael Tan Boon Suan, from the Merrill Lynch bank is also a New Zealand national and is 42 years old. All seven gamblers were arrested for illegal gaming in the country and now face a sentence of 3 months in jail and a fine of HKD $10,000. This condition is only if the players are first time offenders as the sentence may be stronger should they have previous arrests.

All seven players did not show up in court for their hearing but arranged to be granted bail for the sum of HK$1,000. Their cases are now scheduled to be heard next month and during September.

If you follow online poker news, and you’ve seen the news about the latest arrests of hackers in South Korea, you’re probably more concerned than ever about your online safety. The reality is that the South Korean hackers found a security gap that poker sites cannot fix. Imagine if an intruder placed a camera in your house and could watch your computer screen while you play poker. Of course they would have an unfair advantage, and after a number of games, you might realize that something is wrong. Suppose, however, than they had planted these cameras in a thousand houses and that there were thirty of these thieves working together. You’re beaten in hand after hand, and people seem to fold whenever you have a good hand, but it’s not always the same person beating you.

Before you have a chance to get suspicious, they simply move on to a new target, let you play with regular players for a while, and then send in a new member of their crew to take you on some more. It’s hard for poker players to notice that there’s anything unusual going wrong. The poker rooms have difficulty tracing the unusual play patterns. The only way to find out is to find the camera.

What the South Korean hacker gang did was place a computer program that acted just like a camera in the computers at seven hundred different internet cafes around the country. Those programs could show the hackers everything that was done on every computer screen in every internet cafe that they infected.

How does one keep safe from an attack like that? First, use your own computer to play online poker. Second, use a personal firewall and anti-virus software to prevent malware from attacking your computer. Third, scan your computer for malware, spyware, and viruses regularly, at least once a week. If you find anything and you can’t heal it, delete it, or quarantine it, do an internet search on how to get rid of it or ask a computer expert for help in getting rid of it. Viruses don’t just slow down your computer. They can cost you money.

Earlier this year Representative Jim McDermott had introduced the bill Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act of 2010, listed as HR 4976. The bill proposes to tax online gambling in order to generate revenue needed by the state. The bill came up for hearing on May 19. There was no vote. The bill did not move forward to the next stage. In short the hearing was a total waste of time. Everyone simply repeated what they have been saying the last two years. The movement for regulated online gambling remains on life support waiting for someone to turn off the switch.

McDermott said that Internet gambling being illegal is making no difference to American poker players. They are simply gambling at offshore online poker rooms. Legalization, regulation and taxation of online poker will bring the revenue to American coffers. He pointed out that the federal authorities, the states and even the tribes would benefit from this. Barney Frank said that he would bring his bill, HR 2267, before the House Financial Services Committee in July. So many dates have been given and then postponed for this bill that it is doubtful if anyone takes it seriously. In any event the UIGEA regulations come into force on June 1 and Frank’s statement is a bit like trying to shut the door after the horse has bolted. The only minuscule achievement of the hearing was that staunch online gambling opponent, Oregon Republican Representative, Earl Blumenauer, became the 70th co-sponsor of Frank’s bill.

Californian Republican Representative Wally Herger and Virginia Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte made the usual noises against McDermott’s bill. In times of economic crises the Congress has more urgent matters to attend to was their view. They completely ignored the fact that taxing online gambling could at least in part alleviate the economic problem. However, the cruelest cut of all came from Democratic Representative Shelley Berkley from Nevada. Though she recently announced support for the legalization of online gambling, she opposed taxing the revenue generated from it. Without the carrot of tax revenues legalization of online gambling can never become a reality.

I wrote recently about how with the introduction of the Ipad poker
clients for Iphones/Ipads is something that is inevitable.  Weather it’s
a major online poker room (like full tilt, Party or Pokerstars) or a
3rd party who develops the app and put it on there via jailbreak or
whatever still remains to be seen. 

It seems i misspoke.  I ignored the fact that the Iphone isn’t the only smart-phone out there. 
There are many different developers, with different major brands (LG,
Droid, Samsung Blackberry) and most of them each have their own app
store.  So, in ignoring that fact and focusing on the Iphones closed off
software store, i missed a whole market.  A market Casino-Online.com is
looking to corner, and i actually can’t believe it’s taken this long.

Casino-Online.com is not new in the mobile app business, and has been providing gambling
centric content for the market since the company’s early days. 
Currently their main focus is providing content instead of game play,
but that is changing rapidly.  Currently in the UK there are a lot of
online casino games already ready for smartphone use (note, “smartphone”
is not iphone..), and in the US Bodog poker is listed as a “mobile
casino” that is ready, but when i followed the link from Casino-Online
it just took me to the Bodog sign up page.  It could be because i’m in
Canada though.  Here is the Link (it also lists the links from the UK if you’re interested) (also, we are not affiliated wtih Casino-Online.com)

Casino-Online.com’s chief editor Jennifer Lefrack said ” Casino-online.com continues to innovate by not only following the market trends, but actually creating them. Our customers
are tech savvy and because they have 24/7 access on their smartphone, we
need to make sure we provide them instant, easily accessible
information.” 

So it seems that while Iphone may be lagging (purposefully?)
in the online casino bid, the major players are making moves to fix
that.  I know that if the Android app store is offering Full Tilt poker,
or a viable way to connect to Full Tilt, my next Phone will be an
Android capable phone.  Watch out Iphone, or get with the program!

Way back in December I reported that both Full Tilt and Pokerstars will be rolling out big changes in 2010. Structures to tournaments, minimum buy ins for cash games, and many fixes for frustrating players who win a big hand after only sitting at the table for a short period, then leave. Well, Pokerstars has followed through on those changes and here is a summary of what they actually implemented. Check and see what the speculation was back then!

Cash Game Buy Ins
Poker is a game of constantly evolving strategies. One strategy that evolved, and became a huge annoyance to most players, was the “hit n run” attack or “short stacking”. A player buys in for the table minimum and waits for a big hand. Will usually get as much money in the pot as possible (and because they bought in for the minimum it’s usually an “All in”) and as soon as they win their money, they’re gone. An easy double up with little to no strategy.

Pokerstars has decided to roll out three tiers of cash games. A 20-50 big blind, a 40-100 big blind and a 100-250 (with antes) big blind model is now the norm at Pokerstars. This means that the table maximum is now much closer to the table minimum, and will create a more balanced game. I’m not 100% sure how i feel about this, as it’s well accepted strategy to buy in for the table max and bully suckers who only buy in for the minimum (maybe bully is the wrong word…), but for now at least they’re attempting to get this problem under control. They have also increased the minimum amount of time to re-sit at a table with fewer chips than you left with from 30 min to 60 min.

Tournament Changes
Probably the most notable change to the tournament structure at Pokerstars is the addition of the “Knockout” SnG tourney. In live poker land, we call these “Bounty” tournaments, and i quite enjoy them. For every $10 SnG you sign up for, 8 will go to the main pot, and a $2 bounty is placed on everyone’s head. The more people you Knockout, the more money you potentially earn. Easy. And a lot of fun, but be careful, i often run Bounty Tournaments at my house, and often hear “man, that bounty is up for grabs..i wouldn’t normally call with this, but it’s not that much more.” If you hear that, either a savage bad beat is on the way, or you just shouldn’t be calling with those cards.

There is a rumor that Pokerstars will roll out Gender restricted tournaments in the future, but i don’t see how they could enforce this. Would you create a female profile simply to play exclusively female players? Yeah, me too.

There are a few other Misc changes, but nothing as noteworthy as the above. So, are you excited to play a KO tournament?